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More "Half-hearted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had felt certain that the effects of habit or use tended in any marked degree to be conveyed directly and cumulatively to succeeding generations, he could hardly have given us such cautious, half-hearted encouragement of good habits as the following:—"It is not improbable that after long practice virtuous tendencies may be inherited." "Habits, moreover followed during many generations probably tend to ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... decided, it seems to me, by argument. All we can profitably do is to consider narrowly our experience, and to ask ourselves this question: If we feel these objections, do we feel them when we are reading the play with all our force, or only when we are reading it in a half-hearted manner? For, however matters may stand in the former case, in the latter case evidently the fault is ours and not Shakespeare's. And if we try the question thus, I believe we shall find that on the whole the fault is ours. The first, and least important, of the ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... want to say, that I really can say without doing harm to anybody or to any plan. It's this. I did feel so guilty when you talked about your motoring with Mr. Caird to Tlemcen. It was splendid of you both to be willing to go, and you must have thought me cold and half-hearted about it. But I couldn't tell you what was in my mind, even then. I didn't know what was before me; but there was already a thing which I had to keep from you. It was only a small thing. But now it has grown to be a very ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... on March 19th. I fell up against a boatman who offered to take us ashore. An uglier fellow I had never seen in the East. The morning sunshine soon dried the decks of the gunboat Kinsha (then stationed in the river for the defense of the port) which English jack-tars were swabbing in a half-hearted sort of way, and all looked rosy enough.[B] But for the author, who with his companion was a literal "babe in the wood," the day was most eventful and trying to one's personal serenity. We had asked ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... the prisoners a leaf of lettuce. They bite into it, certainly, but very sparingly and with a scornful tooth. It soon becomes plain that I am dealing with half-hearted vegetarians. They want something else: they are beasts of prey, apparently. But what manner of prey? A lucky ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... shadows that lay beneath her wide—yet languorous eyes, the almost imperceptible tremor of her sweetly fashioned lips, all troubled him profoundly. He exerted himself to break the spell upon his senses which this woman, wittingly or not, was weaving. But the effort was at best half-hearted. ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... intentions will be sorely thwarted. He was called upon to give up his son, but I am not sure I should have done it for worldly gain. It was going back to the bondage we were glad to escape. And he had counted on other sons to uphold the faith. But the mother was only half-hearted, and the child will ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... say you're talking just the way I like to hear a man talk," declared the skipper, stoutly. "I'll be cursed if I like to go into a thing with any half-hearted feller. You're my kind, and after this you'll find me your kind." He turned and shouted commands. "Get in mains'l, close reef fores'l, and let her ride with ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... upon the State and local authorities that they avoid their responsibilities to those who most sorely need their help, and who, too, have the greatest claim upon their pity and protecting care. Sometimes those claims are dimly recognised, and half-hearted efforts are made to care for the unfortunate for a short space of time, and to protect them for ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... was taking cover. Their fire, however, was returned with interest, and it helped to make "Johnny" arrive at the decision that it would be a very unwise thing to attack again that day, although he did once make a half-hearted attempt to regain his former position, ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... half-hearted effort to meet its problems as other American communities have met theirs can be accepted as final. Hawaii shall never become a territory in which a governing class of rich planters exists by means of coolie labor. Even ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... is, Balderstone, I'm glad of it. She's too snippy for me, and I'm afraid I should have quarrelled with you about her in a half-hearted, unconvincing manner." ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... Salzburg and a part of Upper Austria to Bavaria, West Galicia to the duchy of Warsaw, and a part of Carinthia with Trieste and the Illyrian provinces to France. A small strip of Galicia was ceded to the Russian tsar, who had rendered France some very half-hearted assistance and was further alienated by the extension of the duchy of Warsaw. Austria was enslaved to the will of Napoleon. She had abandoned the Tyrolese peasants whose loyal insurrection against the Bavarians was the most heroic incident in the war, and she now joined the other nations of the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... middle of the afternoon and laughed a rather half-hearted laugh at the excellent Mandy's comment upon his ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... or manufactured to attract sympathy; they pose as martyrs—refusing food at table, and eating sweets in their room, or stealing down to the larder at night—to the same end. If mild measures fail, then self-mutilation, half-hearted attempts at suicide, and baseless accusations against others are brought into play ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... much for anything you can say, because it 's sure to be half-hearted. You are not in ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... has come to be the secret of success in modern business and the employer who has nothing but wages to offer, nothing in his own passion for work which he can make catching to others, can only get second-rate, half-hearted men and plodders about him. A factory in which the workmen merely work for wages, cannot hope to compete with a factory fitted up with picked ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... or may not include practical studies in domestic science, nursing, and household emergencies, but she should learn somewhere the elements of these studies, so that when she goes into a home of her own her duties and responsibilities will not be met in a half-hearted and ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... or waited outside. The girls bunched together all the time. None of the dancers ever took hands. The so-called dancing consisted of a raising of both arms—the girls had fans in their hands—and a simple attitudinising. The lads all clapped their hands together in time, but in a half-hearted kind of way; the girls struck the palms of their left hands with their fans. The boys were in clean working dress. Some had towels wound round their heads, some wore caps and others hats. The girls were got up in all their best clothes with fine obi ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... success and it was hard for him to run into a half-hearted success when he knew he had surpassed himself. This was doubtless due to the extravagant phraseology of Hippolyte Bis, one of the librettists. But Guillaume Tell had its admirers from the start. I heard it spoken of constantly ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... late in the season, of course, for much new growth in the vegetable beds; but the half-hearted attention of John-Ed, junior, had never brought about this metamorphosis, Tunis well knew. He went on to the Latham house, feeling well pleased. Aside from all other considerations, he was glad to know that his Machiavellian plan had ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... it well; I've heard its prayers and creeds, And seen men put them all to shame with poor, half-hearted deeds. They follow Christ, but far away; they wander and they doubt. I'll serve him in a better way, and ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... as he spoke, but in a half-hearted manner, and tugged heavily at the ends of his moustache, while he scrutinised Mollie's face through half-closed lids. She beamed at him gaily in ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... please he'd like some more! No cook can withstand such a compliment as that, and Ossie cast off his gloom. They all declared that that dinner was just about the best they had ever eaten, and they meant it, and Ossie swelled visibly with pride and almost declined Han's half-hearted offer to help ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... is not such a reproach to him as to profess love and be lukewarm. God wants all your heart. If he can not have it all, he will have none. He desires warm, fervent love. To love him only partially, and not supremely, makes it appear as if he were worthy of only half-hearted love. It makes ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... relapsed into his nervous brooding in the little chair, suddenly roused himself: "He's a funny fellow, Swithin," he said, but in a half-hearted way. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the fickleness, as well as for the insatiability of the poet's love. If the poet's genius consists of his peculiar capacity for love, then in proportion as he outsoars the rest of humanity he will be saddened, if not disillusioned, by the half-hearted return of his love. Mrs. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... the siege itself, it varies an old situation, for Boston was beset by its own neighbors in defence of the common rights. Previously the king's troops, though regarded as invaders, had been but half-hearted oppressors; it was the people themselves who persistently provoked difficulties. The siege proper is of striking military interest, for its hostilities begin by the repulse of an armed expedition into a community of farmers, continue with a pitched battle between regular troops and a militia, produce ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... in the afternoon were half-hearted and perfunctory. There was nothing more to be learned. But he had seen in his mind some vague outline of what they must meet. He saw a something, mammoth, huge, that could grasp and hold an ocean freighter—against whose great body he had seen the waves dash in a line of white ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... control through regulation by law. He had no sympathy with a radical reconstruction of society by the revolution of socialism; even his alliances with the movement of organized labor, which paralleled that of organized capital in the East, were only half-hearted. But he was becoming alarmed over the future of the free democratic ideal. The wisdom of his legislation it is not necessary to discuss here. The essential point is that his conception of the right of government to control social process ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... his betel-nut and squared his shoulders. Somehow he had rather expected something like this. The reason for Umballa's half-hearted ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... everything right for me, denied all things though we are. After ten years of struggle with the vineyard, with several conspicuous failures and now and then a half-hearted success, I have at last rejoiced Mother's heart—and my own as well—with the largest crop within my memory or hers. The fruit, too, has ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... other great office of divine appointment. Their first care was to rear some poor copy of the Temple; and the usual difficulties that attend reconstruction of any sort, and dog every movement that rests upon religious enthusiasm, beset them —strong enemies, and half-hearted friends, and personal jealousies weakening still more their weak forces. In this time of anarchy, of toil at a great task with inadequate resources, of despondency that was rapidly fulfilling its own forebodings, the Prophet, who was the spring of the whole movement, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... notwithstanding, some little show of life stirred now and then in the seeming corpse of the drama. A few players met furtively, assembled a select audience, and gave a clandestine performance, more or less complete, in some obscure quarter. Secret Royalists and but half-hearted Puritans abounded, and these did not scruple to abet a breach of the law, and to be entertained now and then in the old ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... preliminary task of an easier kind; and the supreme task (color) is briefly resumed, after the great impetus has been exhausted. The phase of rest is not clearly defined; the child turns to a very easy task (solid insets). A certain feebleness of character seems to manifest itself in the half-hearted mental processes. The child makes many successive efforts to rise; but he can neither make the decisive, vigorous effort, nor come to a definite decision to cease working. The child is calm, but his state of calm has no variations; he is neither lively, ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... six months he laid the foundation of his knowledge of Spanish history and literature; the Church and medicine had already, as possible careers, been abandoned, and on his return to England he made a half-hearted effort to take up law; still unsettled he again visited Portugal, and finally was relieved of pecuniary difficulties by the settlement of a pension on him by an old school friend, which he relinquished in 1807 on receiving a pension ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... it was a half-hearted attack, for Mirans were becoming distinctly skittish about fifteen-foot UV beams. Two badly blistered ships—and the Mirans retreated to Jupiter. But Mira held Phobos and Deimos. In two weeks, they had set up cannon there, and proved themselves accurate long-range gunners. Against ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... heads!' From Bures, near Bayeux, in this department, where Henry was then holding his court, the four knights followed the Primate to Canterbury, sternly bent on showing their lord that they were neither 'sluggish nor half-hearted.' Of the abbatial buildings which stood here then few traces are left. But the handsome modern mansion built here by Guizot rests, I believe, on the massive foundations, and certainly incorporates some of the solid masonry above ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... beautifully dressed, and three strange men, including Cousin Jim and his soldier friend from India. Cousin Jim had bright, twinkling eyes, and looked full of life and spirit; but his friend's brown face was lined and haggard, and his smile was half-hearted, as if his thoughts were not in ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... In those last words she seemed to hear the appeal of a man's agony. What had he been through before he had brought himself to write those words? They hurt her unutterably, piercing her to the soul, when she remembered her own half-hearted offer to return. Yet she would have given all she had for a few days' respite. The hot fierce longing that beat in those few words frightened her by its intensity. It made her think of one of those overwhelming veldt fires, consuming everything in its path, leaving behind it the blackness ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... hours later,—to receive from Scotty himself the intelligence that Florence was out but would soon return. Evidently the Englishman had been instructed; for, though he added an invitation to wait, it was only half-hearted, and being declined the matter was ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... cried a number of the foremost. But their shouts were feeble and half-hearted, and were quickly drowned in a rising murmur of discontent and ill-humour, which, mingled with cries of "Is that all? Is there no more? Down with the Huguenots!" rose from all parts. Presently these cries ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... arm in a sling. His classmate's face was pale, but as he was surrounded by a crowd of students, Will found it was impossible to make his way to him and soon gave up the attempt. He was standing somewhat back from the train eagerly watching all that was going on about him, but only in a half-hearted way joining in the excitement, for the defeat of the team and his own disappointment in not being able to make the trip had ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... invariably express. We read their thoughts by the light of their smiles. Not to see and hear these men is not to know them, and criticism without personal knowledge is in their case mutilation. Those who did know them listen in despair to the half-hearted praise and clumsy disparagement of critical strangers, and are apt to exclaim, as did the younger Pitt, when some extraneous person was expressing wonder at the enormous reputation of Fox, 'Ah! you have never been under the wand of ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... dining, and in course of time the two were left alone. The Colonel passed the cigars and touched the port wine decanter, which, however, he only offered in a half-hearted way. ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was at hand. He had feared that some such mischief would arise. Seeing that two other soldiers were running to the aid of their fallen comrade, he suddenly gave the signal for the revolt of the slaves. It was premature. Taken by surprise, the half-hearted among the conspirators paid no attention to it, while the timid stood more or less bewildered. Only a few of the resolute and reckless obeyed the call, but these furnished full employment for their guards, for, knowing ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... Chiana rose in revolt. For had they followed it, they would have established their authority on a surer footing, and added much to the greatness of their city by securing for it those lands which are needed to supply it with the necessaries of life. But pursuing that half-hearted policy which is most mischievous in executing justice, some of the Aretines they outlawed, some they condemned to death, and all they deprived of their dignities and ancient importance in their town, while leaving the town itself untouched. And if in the councils then held any Florentine recommended ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... might manage her. The money comes from the Eustace property, and I'd sooner it should go to you than a half-hearted, numb-fingered, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... admission into the Republic. So it was, and is and will be; and the only way to prevent aggression and war was, is, and will be, to "put our foot down." Not to cherish the "peace-in-our-time" policy, or to indulge in the half-hearted language, to which I shall have hereafter to allude—but to combine and strengthen the sections of our Colonial Empire in the West—to give to their people a greater Empire still, a nobler history, and a prouder lot: a lot to last, because based upon institutions which have stood, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... cricketers against whom the unthinking have so much to say; by these and by the few amateurs who, as time goes on, will be found able to bear the strain. For the search after perfection is no light one, and will admit of no half-hearted service. I say nothing here of material rewards, beyond reminding you that your professional cricketer is poorly paid in comparison with an inferior singer of the music-halls, although he gives twice as much pleasure as your lion comique, and ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... have mocked him, in a friendly, half-hearted fashion. I am a medical man, and my own profession is one that does ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... the enactment of laws to protect the people from great wrongs—especially the weaker and more helpless ones? To the half-hearted, the indifferent and the pusillanimous—yes! But with brave, true men, who have at heart the best interests of humanity, this can only intensify opposition to wrong, and give strength for new efforts to destroy its power. These have an undying faith ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... returned Lewes. He was occupied with his own interests; he doubted Challis's intention to continue his work on the book—the announcement had been so half-hearted. ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... on Saturday Night Live should not be overlooked. (This was a "Jaws" parody. Someone lurking outside an apartment door tries all kinds of bogus ways to get the occupant to open up, while ominous music plays in the background. The last attempt is a half-hearted "Candygram!" When the door is opened, a shark bursts in and chomps the poor occupant. There is a moral here for those attracted to candygrammars. Note that, in many circles, pretty much the same ones who remember Monty ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... the saddle, the blue roan tried to sink his head, but the man held him up short, and after two or three half-hearted jumps the animal contented himself with sidling restlessly, and tonguing the bit until white, lathery foam dripped ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... I should be turned out of a home that suited me so well, yet it was apparent to every one that I could not remain under these conditions. We still had music every now and then, but it was in a half-hearted and absent-minded fashion. To make matters worse, we had a national vocal festival inflicted upon us, during which I was obliged to face all kinds of demands; matters did not always pass off without ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... belonged to his partner. "But women when they get together talk all manner of nonsense. Is it likely that I shall alter my course of action because you tell me that she tells you that he tells her that he is losing money? He is a half-hearted fellow who quails at every turn against him. And when he is crying drunk I dare say he makes ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... breaks a man's spirit as defeat, constant, unaltering, hopeless defeat. That's what I've experienced. I am still studying law in a half-hearted way for I don't know what I am going to do with it when I have been admitted. Diplomas don't draw clients. We have been taught that merit wins. But I have learned that the adages, as well as the books and the formulas were ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... furnished him with frequent suggestions and sometimes also with metres. Schiller had, in "The Gods of Greece," sung a glorious elegy on the Olympian age which stimulated his Swedish rival to write "The Asa Age," in which he regretted, though in a rather half-hearted way, the disappearance of Odin, Thor, and Freya. The poem, it must be admitted, falls much below Tegner at his best. Schiller's "Three Words of Faith," in which liberty, virtue, and God are declared to ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... disgust swept over her. She fought it down. Then, with hypocrisy that amazed herself, she met his ardent stare boldly, though with a pretense of timidity. She spoke with a hesitant, remonstrant voice, as if in half-hearted protest, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... it helped me through the worst time in my life. My uncle, after some half-hearted resistance and a talk with my aunt, behaved like the father of a spoilt son. He fixed up an arrangement that gave me capital to play with, released me from too constant a solicitude for the newer business developments—this ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... engaged Elmer Smith as his attorney. Smith appealed to County Attorney Herman Allen for protection for his client. After a half-hearted effort to locate the kidnappers—who were known to everybody—this official gave up the task saying he was "Too busy to bother with the affair, and, besides, the offense was only 'third degree assault' ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... more annoying to Mr. Hazard because his orthodoxy was his strong point. Like most vigorous-minded men, seeing that there was no stopping-place between dogma and negation, he preferred to accept dogma. Of all weaknesses he most disliked timid and half-hearted faith. He would rather have jumped at once to Strong's pure denial, than yield an inch to the argument that a mystery was to be paltered with because it could not be explained. The idea that these gossiping parishioners ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... indeed, move among the men speaking to them, but with a half-hearted air. He cut a pitiful figure. It was not clear whether he was unwilling to oppose ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... not carry on with the requisite energy the conflict against the European coalition. They therefore concurred in establishing a republican government; and here, again, they were right. For, in that struggle for life and death, it would have been madness to trust a hostile or even a half-hearted leader. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that Mrs. Pennycook has lost control of her husband. Yet, such is the fact. She is still a great stickler for principle, but she trembles if her husband looks at her. It appears that Dan Pennycook's half-hearted accusation of Miss Pickett as the author of the anonymous note found on the body of Boras O'Rourke preyed on the spinster's mind, and when Bob McGraw started an investigation she could stand the strain no longer. She fled in terror to the Pennycook home and made ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... honour and religion, and lo! here was this Gallio who not only adorned a party she had been led to regard as reprobate, but treated the whole affair as a half-jocular business, on which one should not be serious. It was sheer weakness, her heart cried out, the weakness of the philanderer, the half-hearted. In her vexation her interest flew in sympathy to Mr. Stocks, and she viewed him for the ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... the Revolution was now gathering thick and fast. Events followed each other with startling rapidity. Morgan watched keenly. He never did anything in a half-hearted way; and we may be sure that he took up the cause of the Revolution with all the fervor of his ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... all expected did not occur, none of the small advantages accruing, now to this side and now to that, in isolated and accidental collisions being followed up. Half-hearted attacks provoked a sullen resistance which was satisfied with mere repulse. Orders were obeyed with mechanical fidelity; no one did any ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... short, Liverpool is to be congratulated on its collections of bones and invertebrates. Turning, however, to the vertebrates, we see that, although the management begins to recognise the importance of "pictorial" mounting, it is done in a half-hearted manner—isolated groups here and there, on square boards, placed in the general collection amongst the birds, on pegs, serving only to render the latter more conspicuous in their shortcomings. This system of Liverpool is being copied at Nottingham, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... what was upon them; the single word patrie was enough to unite them in a common enthusiasm and stern determination. With us it was hardly so; many good judges think that but for the "Lusitania" outrage and the Zeppelins, part of the population would have been half-hearted about the war, and we should have failed to give adequate support to our allies. The cause is not selfishness but ignorance and want of imagination; and what have we done to tap the sources of an intelligent ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... seeming indifference, connects this circumstance with the unscrupulous use of the press for political purposes, and especially against the king, at that time. Just here a romantic figure comes on the scene. Son of the unfortunate young Everard Digby who perished on the scaffold for some half-hearted participation in the Gunpowder Plot, Kenelm Digby, brought up in the reformed religion, had returned in manhood to the religion of his father. In his intellectual composition he had, in common with Browne, a scientific interest, oddly tinged with both poetry and scepticism: he had also a strong ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... camp was gone, and only a few battered and crippled men were left. It was as if there had been a great battle of the giants, and the victorious and successful had gone away with all the fruits of victory, and left the wounded, the helpless, the half-hearted behind. The mining camp at the mouth of the great canyon had been worked out, so far as the placer mines went, and these few broken men who remained, as a rule, were turning their attention to other things. Here one had planted a little garden on the hillside, on a spot that had once been ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... compensates for the trouble of looking after them, for when in that state they fight like tigers, especially if they have not been long together. Once, however, the bulls become friendly, they only fight in a more or less half-hearted way amongst themselves; but woe betide any alien who finds himself near them—they will then band themselves together and fall upon that stranger until even his master would not recognise him. There ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... such a book as Hints and Helps had never existed, Abner shot for the gate—he was but a hobbledehoy fascinated with the idea of playing gentleman. But in Ross there were the makings of a man. For a few half-hearted paces, under the first impulse of horror, he followed his deserting chief, the laughter of the family, the unrestrainable guffaws of the negroes, sounding in the rear. But when Champe's high, offensive giggle, topping all the others, insulted his ears, ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... organisation; and the intense rivalry with France dwarfed and obscured the need for a reconsideration of colonial relations. At length this rivalry flamed out into two wars. The first of these was fought, on both sides, in a strangely half-hearted and lackadaisical way. But in the second (the Seven Years' War, 1756-63) the British cause, after two years of disaster, fell under the confident and daring leadership of Pitt, which brought a series of unexampled successes. The French flag ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... to the confines of China? Let a common wave pass over them, let a great soldier or organiser arise among them to use the grand material at his hand, and who shall say that this may not be the besom with which Providence may sweep the rotten, decadent, impossible, half-hearted south of Europe, as it did a thousand years ago, until it makes ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... saddle; the shuffling and rustle of horses moving at a walk through the long prairie grass; the sudden jolt of a wheel as it dropped from a tufty wad to the barren sand intersecting the clumps of grass of which the prairie is largely made up; the half-hearted neigh of a horse, as though it were striving to break from under the spell of gloomy depression which seemed to weigh heavily upon the very atmosphere; these were the only sounds which broke the gray ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... open to a politician in Rome. Whether Cicero was right or wrong, none can question his amazing energy. He delivered his long series of Philippics at Rome, and kept up a correspondence with the various provincial governors and commanders, all short-sighted and selfish, and several of them half-hearted, endeavouring to keep each man in his place and to elaborate a common plan of operations. He was naturally included in the list of the proscribed, though it is said that Octavian fought long on his behalf, and was slain near Formiae on the 7th of December 43. He had a ship near in which he had ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... prayed, while Gui Camoys sang, riding deeper into the tattered, yellowing forest. By an odd chance Camoys had lighted on that song made by Thibaut of Champagne, beginning Signor, saciez, ki or ne s'en ira, which denounces all half-hearted servitors of Heaven; and this he sang with a lilt gayer than his matter countenanced. Faintly there now came to Osmund and the Queen the sound of Camoys' singing, and they found it, in ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... halted instinctively. On the instant he would have given a great deal not to have stopped at all. It was stupid of him to have paused, but it would not do now to go on without words of some sort. He moved over to the door-way, and made a half-hearted pretence of looking at the photographs in one of the show-cases at its side. As Mr. Gorringe did not take his hands from his pockets, there was no occasion for any ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... other incidents of note were the repulse by the 18th Infantry Brigade of a half-hearted enemy attack on Cantaing on the 1st December, and D.H.Q. being three times shelled out of its Headquarters between 30th November and ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... Leit-Motiv, or guiding theme, the use of which forms, as it were, the base upon which the entire structure of his later works rests. In those early days he employed it with timidity, it is true, and with but a half-hearted appreciation of the poetical effect which it commands; but from that day forth each of his works shows a more complete command of its resources, and a subtler instinct as to its employment. The intrinsic musical interest of 'Der Fliegende Hollaender' is unequal. Wagner had made great ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... here is Romer. I shan't tell him a word about it. Well, I'll think it over." She called Daphne back and said in a half-hearted way— ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... as when he is abroad. Under this half-jesting reference to one of the characteristics of our race, there abides a sober truth, namely, that the Scotsman carries with him from his parent home into the world without no half-hearted acceptance of the duties required of him in the land of his adoption. He is usually a public-spirited citizen, a useful member of society, wherever you find him. But that does not lessen the warmth of his ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... until the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 had formally won the principle of trading-rights at five open ports, and thus established a first basis of agreement between England and China (to which all the trading powers hastened to subscribe), these interests expanded in a half-hearted way until 1860, when in order to terminate friction, the principle of extraterritoriality was boldly borrowed from the Turkish Capitulations, and made the rock on which the entire fabric of international dealings in China was based. These treaties, with ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... and more. It is a road of varied fortunes, like many of those who have passed over it; it is sometimes rich in all manner of priceless possessions, and again it is barren, poverty-stricken, and desolate. It climbs long hills, sometimes in a roundabout, hesitating, half-hearted way, and sometimes with an abrupt and breathless ascent; at the summit it seems to pause a moment as if to invite the traveller to survey the splendid domain which it commands. On one side, in such a restful moment, one sees the wide circle of waters, stretching far off to a horizon which rests ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... There was a half-hearted attempt at the maintenance of the proprieties, and then Wilbraham Hall rang with the laughter of a joke which the next day had become the common precious property of all the Five Towns. When the aged rector had restored his flock to a sense of decency Mr. Emanuel ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... evils: without end The old man gathers what he dares not spend, While, as for action, do he what he will, 'Tis all half-hearted, spiritless, and chill: Inert, irresolute, his neck he cranes Into the future, grumbles, and complains, Extols his own young years with peevish praise, But rates ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... stairs. At the top of these I was confronted by a glass door, beyond which, entrenched behind a desk, sat a cynical-looking youth. A smaller boy in the background talked into a telephone. Both were giggling. On seeing me the slightly larger of the two advanced with a half-hearted attempt at solemnity, though unable to resist a Parthian shaft at his companion, who was seized on the instant with a ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... letters, on the iron tablet of her will. He must yield. She the woman, the mother of his children, how should she ever even think to yield? It was unthinkable. He, the man, the weak, the false, the treacherous, the half-hearted, it was he who must yield. Was not hers the divine will and the divine right? Ha, she would be less than woman if she ever capitulated, abandoned her divine responsibility as woman! No, he ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... to demonstrate that the man with a diploma has learned to use the tools of life skilfully; has learned how to focus his faculties so that he can bring the whole man to his task, and not a part of himself. Low ideals, slipshod work, aimless, systemless, half-hearted endeavors, should have ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... What is self? and how shall a man be himself? And the poet's answer is, "Self is only found by being lost, gained by being given away": an answer at least as old as the gospels. The eponymous hero of the story is a man essentially half-hearted, "the incarnation of a compromising dread of self-committal to any one course," a ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... contempt or pity upon the life of the farm. The successful rural teacher must be able to identify himself very completely with the interests and activities of the community; nor can this be done in any half-hearted, sentimental, or professional manner. It must be a spontaneous and natural response arising from a true interest in the people, a knowledge of their lives, and a sincere desire for their welfare. Any ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... instinct as infallible as that of a homing pigeon, he was not puzzled as to direction. Within two hours his long, tireless stride brought him out into a clearing in the valley where his own logging-camp stood. He went directly to the log-landing, where in a listless and half-hearted manner the loading crew were piling logs on ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... Charles H. Spurgeon should have weight here. He said: "If a man is to be a soul-winner, there must be in him intensity of emotion as well as sincerity of heart. You may repeat the most affectionate exhortations in such a half-hearted manner that no one will be moved either by love or fear. I believe that for soul-winning there is more in this matter of earnestness than ...
— The Art of Soul-Winning • J.W. Mahood
... course, that the seigneurs should lend a hand in encouraging the immigration of people from their old homes in France. Some of them did this. Robert Giffard, who held the seigneury of Beauport just below Quebec, was a notable example. The great majority of the seigneurs, however, made only half-hearted attempts in this direction, and their efforts went for little or nothing. What they did was to meet, on arrival at Quebec, the shiploads of settlers sent out by the royal officers. There they gathered about the incoming vessel, like so many land agents, each explaining what advantages ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... very affable tone; "the heat and din of the city will drive me mad! And I have had no end of troublesome business. The senators are all fools or slaves of Caesar. That treacherous rascal, Curio, is blocking all our efforts. Even Pompeius is half-hearted in the cause. It wouldn't take much to make him go back to Caesar, and ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... looked upon as anaemic and nebulous. He had permitted, so the Republicans contended, the honor of the country to be stained and Americans to be destroyed, without effective action. His early opposition to preparedness and the half-hearted measures of army reform had proved his weakness, at least to the satisfaction of Republican stump orators. He had won the hearty dislike of the bankers, the manufacturers, and the merchants by his attacks on ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... not lost while Dmitri remained at liberty. Lost armies could be restored. He took refuge in Putivle, one of the towns which had pronounced in his favor, and while his enemies, who proved half-hearted in the cause of Boris, wasted their time in besieging a small fortress, new adherents flocked to his banner. Boris was furious against his generals, but his fury caused them to hate instead of to serve him. He tried to get rid of Dmitri ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the dog, with a last hysterical yelp, suddenly flattened its body and wriggled under a corner of the shed, Pink turned and rode after the others, who had passed the corral and were heading for the upper and of a small patch of green stuff that looked like a half-hearted attempt at a vegetable garden. As he passed the shed an Indian in dirty overalls and gingham shirt craned his neck around the doorway and watched him malevolently; but Pink, sighting the green patch and remembering their ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... arrival of fresh troops. During the next day or two the enemy's artillery was as active as hitherto, but the punishment he had received in his attacks made him pause, and there were only small half-hearted attempts to reach our line. They were all beaten off by infantry fire, and the reliefs of the various brigades of the XXIst Corps were complete by November 28. It had not been given to the XXIst Corps to obtain the distinction of driving ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... Garrison are never tired of condemning Dr. Channing for what they call his timidity, his shunning any personal contact with the great abolitionist, his failure to grapple boldly with the evils of slavery, and his half-hearted espousal of the cause of abolition. The Unitarians generally are by these writers regarded in ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... lower sky, and lies heavily over the sands of Dee. It leaves the upper blue clear and the head of Orion, but dims the flicker of Sirius and shortens the steady ray of the evening star. The people scattered about are not mining people, but half-hearted agriculturists, and very poor. Their cottages are rather cabins; not a tiled roof is in the country, but the slates have taken some beauty with time, having dips and dimples, and grass upon their edges. The walls are all thickly whitewashed, which is a pleasure to see. How willingly would one ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... emphasize this here at starting, lest any one should think that I was in any way responsible for the manner in which our experiment was conducted. If fault there was, it lies at Pettigrew's door. I remember distinctly asking him—not in a half-hearted way, but boldly—to produce his tobacco. I did this at an early hour of the proceedings, immediately after I had lighted a second cigar. The reason I took that cigar will be obvious to every gentleman who smokes. Had I declined it, Pettigrew might have thought that I ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... ingratitude.' No party, he says, was ever so unpopular. It had already disgusted people with political economy; and would disgust them with parliamentary reform, if it could associate itself in public opinion with the cause[106]. This was indeed to turn the tables. The half-hearted disciple was insulting the thoroughbred teacher who had borne the heat and burthen of the day, and from whom he had learned his own doctrine. Upon this and other impertinences—the assertion, for example, that Utilitarians were as incapable of understanding ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... of his old attitude returned; he feebly gazed at a priceless Massero vase, made a half-hearted attempt to join thumb and forefinger, then rambled toward the door, where two spotless flunkies attended with ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... that they would bring him a reply in kind. When at last her letters did come, they were so short, scant, and preoccupied that they fell like blows upon his heart. When he thought of the passionately loving letters that she was getting almost daily, while he got so rarely these half-hearted and insufficient ones, his pride became aroused, and he decided that he would imitate her to the extent of writing more rarely, even if he could not find it in his heart to write to her coolly, as she did to him. In this way it came to ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... creditor, he would knock boldly, even ostentatiously; if it were the maid, she would not knock at all; if it were the hall-boy, he would not come until I had rung five times for him. None of these things has occurred; the knock is the half-hearted knock which betokens either that the person who knocked is in trouble, or is uncertain as to his reception. I am willing, however, considering the heat and my desire to quench my thirst, to wager that it ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... pick the Puant directly in front of him, and be sure to hit that Puant. If the attack was half-hearted and the Indians gained time to rally, Celeste would suffer the consequences; they could kill her or escape with her. If you wish to gain an Indian's respect you must make a neat job of shooting him down. He ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... IX. from Rome. The ship I was in was stationed at Civita Vecchia, the sea-port of Rome, partly in order to protect British interests—that is, the persons and properties of British subjects—partly with the object of taking that half-hearted part in religious politics which has always been such a humiliating role ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... over the shoulder to Frimley,' said David at last. They had made a half-hearted inspection of the stock in the home fields, and were now passing through the gate on to the moor. 'I must see Margaret Dawson again before ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reeds on which to lean. They still laboured under a sense of having been compromised, and of resultant social ostracism. This, although their former parsonic lodger had vanished from the scene on the day following his threatened immersion—a half-hearted proposition on his part of "facing out the undeserved obloquy, living down the coarse persecution" meeting with as scant encouragement from his ecclesiastical superior, the vicar, as from themselves. Theresa—it really was hard on her—shared their eclipse. Hence the humble ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... fingers fumbled impotently for the stops. His professional experience saved a calamitous situation. With an acrobat's stride he reached the stage, telescoped fiddle and bow to normal proportions, and after a lightning nod to the chef d'orchestre, played the Marseillaise. At the end there was half-hearted perfunctory applause. A light hearted section of every audience applauds anything. But mingled with it there came from another section a horrible sibilant sound, the stage death warrant of many an artist's dreams, the modern down-turned thumb ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... lose everything. That is the justification of our so-called tyranny. Are we to have nothing for our risks? Look at this installation of machinery—all built, too, with a view to future aggrandizement: does it strike you as a half-hearted speculation?" ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... amidst general sympathy and congratulation, with the Prince Regent himself to wish them good fortune, the King, the Duchess, and their suite left Hartwell in April, 1814. The return to France was as triumphant as a somewhat half-hearted and doubtful enthusiasm could make it, and most of such cordiality as there was fell to the share of the Duchess. As she passed to Notre-Dame in May, 1814, on entering Paris, she was vociferously greeted. The feeling of loyalty, however, was not much longer-lived ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... copy of it. In this, as in other matters, the teacher who has become a victim of routine will give a facile but mainly "notional" assent to the suggestions that are placed before him, will promise to try them, and will make an unintelligent and half-hearted attempt to do so, but will as often as not slide back into practices which do not materially differ from those which he professes to have abandoned. The pressure of the whole system of Western education—not to speak of Western civilisation—will be too strong for ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... vociferous and somewhat dishevelled Teresa Thundleford; her clothing was certainly not a mass of flames, as the more excitable members of the party afterwards declared, but the edge of her skirt and part of the table-cover in which she had been hastily wrapped were alight in a flickering, half-hearted manner. Rex flung his struggling burden on the billiard table, and for one breathless minute the work of beating out the sparks with rugs and cushions and playing on them with soda-water syphons engrossed the energies ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... the Gulf of Mexico. Whilst acknowledging that the South had grievances, they saw no reason to believe that redress might not be obtained by constitutional means. At the same time, although they questioned the expediency, they held no half-hearted opinion as to the right, of secession, and in their particular case the right seems undeniable. When the Constitution of the United States was ratified, Virginia, by the mouth of its Legislature, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... heavily. Winters were rather severe and very long at Seaforth; Esther was much shut up to the house. It made things all the harder for her. To the colonel it made no difference. He lay upon his couch, summer or winter, and went on with his half-hearted reading,—half a heart was all he brought to it; while Esther would stand at the window, watching the snow drive past, or the beating down of the rain, or the glitter of the sunbeams upon a wide white world, and almost wonder at the thought that warm lights ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... deficiency was sensibly felt in a lowering of general tone, both in the domain of intellect and in that of practice. The spirit of feudalism and of the old chivalry had all but departed, but had left a vacuum which was not yet supplied. As for loyalty, the half-hearted feeling of necessity or expedience, which for more than half the century was the main support of the German dynasty, was something different not in degree only, but in kind, from that which had upheld the throne in time past. Jacobitism, on the other ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Many officers will resign to join Ulster, and there will be such a host of retired officers in the Ulster ranks that men who would stand by the Government no matter what it did, will be worse than half-hearted in all they do. No army could stand such a ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... Trees, houses, the fertile fields, the mountain slopes—all were smothered under a layer of monotonous pallor. They knew what it meant. It meant ruin to their crops and vineyards. None the less, they raised a shout, a half-hearted shout, of praise. For Nepentheans are born politicians and courteous by nature. It is their heritage from the Good Duke Alfred to "keep smiling." A shout was expected of them under the circumstances; it costs nothing and may even do good, inasmuch as Saint Dodekanus could remove the ashes ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... this does not hinder quickness and despatch. There are those who, when they have anything to do, seem to go round it and round it, instead of attacking it at once and getting it out of the way; and when they do begin it they do so in a listless and half-hearted fashion. There are those who look at their work, according to the simile of Sidney Smith, like men who stand shivering on the bank instead of at once taking the plunge. "In order," he says, "to do anything that is worth doing in this world, we must not stand shivering on ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... industry; and rightly so, for it has, I should say, been abundantly proved that Americans are the only people who really understand both cinema acting and cinema production. Italy, France and England make a few pictures, but their efforts are half-hearted: not only because acting for the film is a new and separate art, but because atmospheric conditions are better in America ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... request-man—the man with "private affairs"—was a small leading stoker with a face seamed by innumerable tiny wrinkles. His skin resembled a piece of parchment that somebody had crumpled in a fit of petulance and made a half-hearted attempt to smooth out again; even his ears were crumpled. His brown eyes, big and sad, were like the eyes of ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... not weakly complain because he had no helpers. Good and earnest men are very apt to say much about the half-hearted way in which their brethren take up some cause in which they are eagerly interested, and sometimes to abandon it altogether for that reason. May not such faint hearts learn a lesson from him who had 'no man like-minded,' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Pinega. In place of the three hundred dispirited White Guards was a well trained regiment of local Russian troops which, together with recruits, numbered over two thousand. Under the instruction of Lieut. Wright of "M" Company, who had been trained as an American machine gun officer, the at first half-hearted Russians had developed an eight-gun machine gun unit of fine spirit, which later distinguished itself in action, standing between the city and the Bolsheviks in March when the Americans had left to fight on another front. Also under the instruction of a veteran ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... had once rustled with gay and cheerful people, was now cold, echoing, empty, repellent. Nothing came from the balcony, wherein Helen's sweet voice wandered, save a faint, half-hearted hand-clapping. No one sat in the boxes, and only here and there a man wore evening-dress. The women were always intense, but undemonstrative. Under these sad conditions the music of the orchestra became factitious, a brazen clatter raised to reinforce the courage of the ushers, ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... but it is not possible to even faintly like or hesitatingly pity a cowardly Robert Herrick, whose self-pity is so strong, and who from first to last is, as his creator intended him to be, a thorough inefficient. Half-hearted in his wickedness, self-saving in his repentance, he somehow fails to interest one; and even his lower-class associates, the horrible Huish and the American captain, are almost less detestable. Huish is quite diabolical, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... his face flushing to a dull, dark red, for he saw in a moment what the thing that had happened would mean to those others—the audience before him—the men he had summoned to listen to his half-hearted words. ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... she should finish her lessons with dispatch, because it was Saturday, and she was going to the city with Mademoiselle's party to spend an hour in the dentist's chair. But the weather was not conducive to concentrated effort. After an hour of half-hearted study, she closed her geometry, and started upstairs to dress, leaving the stay-at-homes ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... taken up at least a temporary dwelling; but the wind was blowing shiveringly from the snow-capped mountains not many miles away, and there was still a wintry aspect about the vale. The cold evidently affected the birds as it did myself, for they lisped only a few bars of song in a half-hearted way. Evening was approaching, and the two travellers—the human ones, I mean—started on the trail down the valleys and canyons toward Georgetown, which they reached at dusk, tired, but thankful for the privilege of spending an idyllic ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... him to us less frequently on those commanding altitudes. He is oftener careful and concerned about many things, groping occasionally in the world's ways for the world's gifts, and handicapped in the struggle for them by a contemptuous and half-hearted adoption of the world's methods ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... calf by the forelegs and drew the forlorn little animal up before him on the saddle. As it stretched out quietly across his thighs, following a half-hearted struggle to escape, Kay saw Don Mike give the orphan his left ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Relinquishing another half-hearted expostulation which rose to her lips, Kate commenced to read. Ralph was enchanted, and, deliciously tickled at the idea that he was like someone in print, he chuckled under his breath. Soon they came to the part that had struck Kate as being so ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... large, noisy, good-natured fellow, at first mumbled something about the kid being "excess baggage," but his objections were only half-hearted, for like the others, he was already under the hypnotic spell of the baby's round, confiding eyes, and he eventually contented himself with an occasional reprimand to Toby, who was now sometimes late on his cues. Polly wondered, at these times, why the old man's stories were so suddenly cut ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... door, seemed to leave the day's brightness behind her. The air indoors was chill, flat. A half-hearted little coal fire flickered in the grate, and Koga was cleaning silver at the table. Sammy took David Copperfield from the mantel and settled herself ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... circumstances that cut these men off more completely from the rest of mankind, whose ideal of conduct had never undergone the trial of a fiendish and appalling joke. They were exasperated with him for being a half-hearted shirker: he focussed on them his hatred of the whole thing; he would have liked to take a signal revenge for the abhorrent opportunity they had put in his way. Trust a boat on the high seas to bring out the Irrational that lurks at ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... I lost the key. I made one or two half-hearted efforts to get into it with a button-hook; but, finding that the lock lived up to its reputation, I resigned myself to regarding it for the future as an article for ornament, not for use. In this capacity it has followed me about from house to house. As an ornament it is without beauty, ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... 'undecided,' because, apart from the 'so far,' which sounds terribly half-hearted, there are passages in these very pages in which Mr. Bradley admits the pluralistic thesis. Read, for example, what he says, on p. 578, of a billiard ball keeping its 'character' unchanged, though, in its change of place, its 'existence' gets altered; or what he says, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... was silence, then the clamour broke out with redoubled violence, and a portion of the multitude made a rush round the edge of the pool towards the rock platform, which was repelled by the soldiers in a very half-hearted way. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... insane desire to take Mrs. Butler by main force, and drag her out of the room. Poor Matty's blushes changed to pallor, and her hand shook as she pessed Miss Peters her creamless tea. Mr. Jones also, who had been listening to the conversation in a half-hearted way suddenly felt himself turning very rigid and stiff, and the eyes which he fixed on Daisy Jenkins took a glassy stare as though he were looking through that young ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... cordiality by the commandant, General Taffy, and assigned to the command of the 27th Volunteer Infantry. The general was a man well known throughout the army for his courage and ability, but notwithstanding this Sam took a strong prejudice against him, for he seemed to be half-hearted in his work and to disapprove of the prevailing policy of pacification by fire and sword. Sam ascribed this feebleness to the fact that he had been originally appointed to the army from civil life, and that he had not enjoyed the benefits of an ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... recalled, and the movement failed. For the moment the effect was injurious to the revolutionary party, and useful to the king. It was clear that menace and outrage would not move him, and that more was wanted than the half-hearted measures of ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook or threat he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant. ...
— A Message to Garcia - Being a Preachment • Elbert Hubbard
... who played an important part in Chinese politics throughout the dowager-empress's tenure of power, were heart and soul with the Boxers. But it was noted by the defenders of the legations that Prince Ching's troops seldom took part, or only in a half-hearted way, in the fighting, which was chiefly conducted by Tung-fu-hsiang's soldiery and the Boxer levies. The modern artillery which the Chinese possessed was only spasmodically brought into play. Nor did any of the attacking parties ever show the fearlessness and determination which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... luxuriously. Inside him, the wild-cat gave him a sudden claw, but it was a half-hearted effort, the effort of one who knows that he is beaten. Mr Meggs was so absorbed in his thoughts that he did not even ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... His fingers fumbled impotently for the stops. His professional experience saved a calamitous situation. With an acrobat's stride he reached the stage, telescoped fiddle and bow to normal proportions, and after a lightning nod to the chef d'orchestre, played the Marseillaise. At the end there was half-hearted perfunctory applause. A light hearted section of every audience applauds anything. But mingled with it there came from another section a horrible sibilant sound, the stage death warrant of many an artist's dreams, the modern down-turned ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... of German flags and presents for the chiefs. The German government continued its efforts to secure a footing on the lower Niger until the fall of Prince Bismarck from power in March 1890, when opposition ceased, and on the failure of the half-hearted attempt made later to establish relations with Gando from Togoland, Germany dropped out of the competition for ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... conviction of a 'call' as many men of his day in the High Church or Evangelical parties; but he was, at the time, strongly drawn by the example and teaching of Stanley and Maurice, and he soon showed that it was not merely for negative reasons or from half-hearted zeal that he had made the choice. When urged by Stanley to seek a curacy in West London, he deliberately chose the East End of the town because the need there was greater and the training in self-sacrifice was sterner; and there is no doubt that the popular sympathies, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... chief goal kicker called out: "Six—eleven—forty-two—nineteen—twelve" to his men, and they put on nose guards till it was clear whether we meant Port Arthur or Portsmouth. But old Jack wasn't working for the furniture and glass factories that night. He sat down quiet and sang "Ramble" in a half-hearted way. His feelings had been hurt, so the twenty told me, because his offer to the church had been refused. But the wassail went on; and Brady himself couldn't have hammered the thirst mob into a better imitation ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... publicist, editor, preacher was there who did not know either generally or specifically of these great frauds in taxation. Some of them might protest in a half-hearted, insincere or meaningless way. But the propertied classes did not mind wordy criticism so long as it was not backed by political action. In other words, they could afford to tolerate, even be amused by, gusty denunciation ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... liberty, to snap, here and there, a button or a lace? A more heroic work is required of the great protagonist, if, indeed, he will follow his mistress to the end. He shakes his head. What! Is his service, then, but half-hearted after all? Or, can it be, that behind the mask of the goddess he begins to divine the teeth and claws of the brute? But if nature be no goddess, how can we accept her as sponsor for liberty? And if liberty be taken on its own merits, how is it to be distinguished from anarchy? How, but by the due ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... only some of the things it is necessary to remember before we finally decide to desert a temporarily sick friend. If I were the ruler of a state I should pray the gods to preserve me from half-hearted Allies and over-cautious friends. If I wished to help a fallen state or lend an honest hand in a great cause, whether it were to eradicate a hideous and fatal national malady or assert a principle of right and justice, first shield me from ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... something for my father. There is only one thing in the world that can make music, at all times and under all circumstances, up to its general standard; that is a hand-organ, or one of its variations. I went to the piano and played something in a listless, half-hearted way. I simply was not in the mood. I was wondering, while playing, when my mother would dismiss me and let me go; but my father was so enthusiastic in his praise that he touched my vanity—which was great—and more than that; he displayed that sincere appreciation ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... The men urged on their own beasts, who growled and whined but hesitated to charge. Evidently becoming impatient, and in full consciousness of his might the intruder raised his tail stiffly erect and shot forward. Several of the defending lions made a half-hearted attempt to obstruct his passage, but they might as well have placed themselves in the path of an express train, as hurling them aside the great beast leaped straight for one of the men. A dozen spears were launched at him and a dozen sabers leaped from their scabbards; ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... be so potential for harm that it is for the common interest that they should not be gratified. This may be so, though I do not believe it. But whether it be so or not, of one thing I am certain,—and that is that the half-hearted dallying with things sexual is wholly an evil; that the prurient sniffing and sniggering round the subject is more fraught with peril to a community, more debasing to the emotional currency, more blighting to the higher sexual feelings ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... added to her burden by his hostile feeling toward her preserver, which he had not been able wholly to disguise. Such a feeling on his part seemed both unnatural and wrong. He professed himself ready to do anything she wished for Gregory, but it was in a half-hearted way, to oblige her, and not for the sake of the injured man. When she went to him for Christian consolation, his words, though well-chosen, lacked heartiness and ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... exiles have a friendly feeling for their former comrades, and a keen jealousy for the credit of Ulster. There is a constant interchange of courtesies between them and their old pupil, Cuchulainn, whom they do not scruple to exhort to fresh efforts for Ulster's honour. An equally half-hearted warrior is Lugaid Mac Nois, king of Munster, who was bound in friendship ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... chivalry to the uttermost; and he will never fail her for an instant—he will never even confess to himself in the loneliness of his own heart that there is anything amiss. The severest criticism he will ever pass upon her will be a half-hearted wish that she should exhibit the best side of herself more consistently. And so I come at last to think that there are many worse things in the world for a strong man than to be the bulwark and fortress of a thoroughly inferior ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and the small bottle with insult as a demi-tasse. Then, too, she loses caste at once; for it is not enough that a girl should not do evil: she must also avoid the appearance of evil. She will be judged by the character of her companions, and a few half-hearted denials, a shrug of the shoulders, a discreetly suppressed smile, will place her among the list of his "mashes." ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... these Memoirs is as exciting as any tale of imaginary adventure, with the real horrors of a brutal civil war for background. Byrne is no half-hearted partisan; he hates well, but is not unjust, admitting alike the errors committed by his comrades and the ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... years of age, and this was her third war in Ireland. Nevertheless, she and her Council girded themselves resolutely to the struggle. There could at least be no half-hearted measure now; no petty pleas of economy; no penurious doling out of men and money. No one, not even the queen herself, could reasonably question the gravity ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... Indians should participate in any severe conflict between the whites. They were a numerous and a warlike people and, from their point of view, they had more at stake than the alien whites who were contesting for control of the red man's continent. Both British and Americans have been blamed for "half-hearted attempts to keep the Indians neutral." The truth is that each side strove to enlist the Indians—to be used, if needed later, as warriors. Massacre was no part of this policy, though it may have been countenanced by individual ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... the lady. 'That'll be Clement's son, the biggest thief and reiver in the country-side. To trust a note to him! But I'll give the benefit of my opinions to Lady Whitecross when we two forgather. Let her look to herself! I have no patience with half-hearted carlines, that complies on the Lord's day morning with the kirk, and comes taigling the same night to the conventicle. The one or the other! is what I say: hell or heaven- -Haddie's abominations or the pure word of God dreeping from the lips ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... young lady who likes to be loved for herself alone, and thinks permission to adore is sufficient reward for her votary. Common-sense told Philip that the jealous mistress would flout him and land him in failure if he gave her a half-hearted service; but the other young lady, the Helen of the professions, was always beckoning him and alluring him by the most subtle arts, occupying all his hours with meditations on her grace and beauty, till it seemed the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... high festival of the year, was approaching, and all the community was stirred with deep desire for its worthy celebration. Sociability ceased, or at best was sustained in limp, half-hearted fashion by the men. The ladies had other things to think of; for on them rested the sole responsibility of the Christmas preparations—the providing of copious lodging for expected guests, the bedecking of rooms with evergreens and holly, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... gulch was sweeping, original, and striking. He laughed to scorn our half-hearted theory of a gold deposit in the bed and bars of our favorite stream. We were not to look for auriferous alluvium in the bed of any present existing stream, but in the "cement" or dried-up bed of the original prehistoric rivers that formerly ran parallel with the present ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the shoals of delightful books which publishers prepare for the Christmas tables of lucky children. If he be old enough to remember Mrs. Trimmer's "History of the Robins," "The Fairchild Family," or that Poly-technically inspired romance, the "Swiss Family Robinson," he feels that a certain half-hearted approval of more dreary volumes is possibly due to the glamour which middle age casts upon the past. It is said that even Barbauld's "Evenings at Home" and "Sandford and Merton" (the anecdotes ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... I declared tartly. I was by no means satisfied with so half-hearted a vindication; nor did I care to owe my immunity to a patronizing lie on Mr. Van Blarcom's part. "You have accused me of spying. Do you think I'll let it go at that? I insist that you have my baggage brought up here and that you search it ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... the result of a passing impulse," he thought, "sooner or later she will come to me. Nature, however, tolerates no fitful, half-hearted scholars, and should she prove one, she will be contented ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... with his shoulder against the mantelpiece, listening in a half-hearted way to his sisters' conversation. With a heavy jerk he threw himself upright and slowly crossed the room. He stood for some moments immediately behind Hilda without touching her. Then he raised his ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... to make some half-hearted reply, when her eyes rested upon the face of a girl on the opposite side of the room. It was the most beautiful and perfect face she had ever seen, and she wondered who she was and where she had come from. She tried to listen to what Bramshaw was saying and at the same time watch ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... ladies to-day were but broken reeds on which to lean. They still laboured under a sense of having been compromised, and of resultant social ostracism. This, although their former parsonic lodger had vanished from the scene on the day following his threatened immersion—a half-hearted proposition on his part of "facing out the undeserved obloquy, living down the coarse persecution" meeting with as scant encouragement from his ecclesiastical superior, the vicar, as from themselves. Theresa—it really was ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... pursuit was made the following morning, but, as will be seen, this was carried out in so half-hearted a manner, that the mutineers were able to get safely across the Sutlej with their loot, notwithstanding that the passage of this broad river had to be made by means of a ferry, where only very few boats were available. Having reached Philour, the British troops were ordered to push on to Delhi, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... broom—his mother's best, taken unknown to her—obliterated all traces of the water systems, and the hard spray was splashed against the windows just long enough to splatter the sashes well. The dirtiest places on the steps met with a half-hearted scrub or two before he reeled up the hose. A moment later, with the rake over one shoulder, and the lawn mower trailing noisily behind him, he set off to ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... not more than a thousand men, all told. It is obvious that I must make for the interior. There, I gather strength as I advance, the warships cannot pursue, and I can choose my own positions to meet the half-hearted forces that Dom Miguel will collect to oppose me. In fact, I and every armed man in Maceio ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... sat dumbfounded, his face flushing to a dull, dark red, for he saw in a moment what the thing that had happened would mean to those others—the audience before him—the men he had summoned to listen to his half-hearted words. ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... so; but he forced himself to join the cheering crowd and to make a half-hearted pretense of rejoicing. All the while he was thinking that Grant owed everything to him, and that perhaps he had been foolish in training a fellow to fill his shoes in such an emergency. For Phil had long entertained the ambition of becoming the ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... infallible as that of a homing pigeon, he was not puzzled as to direction. Within two hours his long, tireless stride brought him out into a clearing in the valley where his own logging-camp stood. He went directly to the log-landing, where in a listless and half-hearted manner the loading crew were piling logs ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... glaring at him fiercely. The fall wakened the poor Knight, but he had not the strength to rise. Sitting on the hard stones and looking reproachfully at the Cowardly Lion, he began his ballad in a half-hearted fashion. The Cowardly Lion's heart was like to burst between lack of breath and fear, but making one last tremendous effort and still roaring his song, he bounded at the Chief Poker, seized the rope, and was back before the stupid creature had time ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... incidents of note were the repulse by the 18th Infantry Brigade of a half-hearted enemy attack on Cantaing on the 1st December, and D.H.Q. being three times shelled out of its Headquarters between ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... early, clumsily tiptoeing about to get breakfast. Neighbours had furnished the customary donations of cake, pie, and doughnuts, which gave Luke the opportunity of spreading the breakfast table with these kingly viands and doing justice to them in no half-hearted fashion. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... had hoped. He became a Confederate hero over night, and there was no longer any danger of his being recalled. There were several half-hearted attempts to kick him upstairs—an offer of a commission in the now defunct Virginia Provisional Army, which he rejected scornfully, and a similar offer in the regular Confederate States Army, which he politely declined ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... the price of transporting the freight from one railway to another at Breslau, Berlin, Magdeburg, and Cologne, would render the scheme impossible. Balzac showed unusual docility at this juncture; he was evidently already half-hearted about the enterprise, and remarked that since his first letter he had himself thought of the objections pointed out by M. Surville, and had remembered hearing that a forest purchased in Auvergne, had ruined the buyer, owing to the difficulty ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... no miracles. I am a poor sinner,— striving to do well, but alas!—for ever striving in vain. The days of noble living are past,—and we are all too much fallen in the ways of error to deserve that our Lord should bless the too often half-hearted and grudging labour of his so-called servants. Come here, ma mignonne!" he continued, calling Babette, who approached him with a curious air of half-timid boldness—"Thou art but a very little girl," he said, laying his thin white hand softly on her tumbled brown curls—"Nevertheless, I should be ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... which has just been won is the victory of the Radicals. Gladstone and the Caucus have triumphed all along the line, and it is the strong, definite, decided policy which has commended itself, and not the halting, half-hearted, armchair business.... The country feels it, and we should be mad to efface ourselves and disappoint the expectations ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... refuse to come with us (which would have spoiled everything), until Scanlon took a hand in the fray and let his imagination run riot about the law, which, as he was the official representative of it and wore a pewter star on his breast, soon settled To'oto'o's half-hearted objections. If anything else were wanted, it was the arrival at this juncture of Seumanutafa at the head of a dozen retainers, who added the finishing stroke to the little resistance To'oto'o had left. Then we all started ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... be broken? Breaking a habit is forming a counter-habit, and the more positive the counter-habit the better for us. This counter-habit must not be left to form itself, but must be practised diligently. Strong motivation is necessary, no half-hearted acquiescence in somebody else's injunction to get rid of the habit. We must adopt the counter-habit as ours, and work for a high standard of skill in it. For example, if we come to realize that we have ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... say but there's good in that fancy. To have any spot of your own, however small—freehold, I mean—must be a comfort. At the same time, what's the world for, if you're to meet it in that half-hearted way? I don't mean that every young man—there are exceptions—must sow just so many bushels of avena fatua. There are plenty of enjoyments to be got without leading a wild life—which I should be the last to recommend to any young man of ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... actual festivity. Small as was the range of the valley, it still allowed retreats during the dances for waiting couples among the convenient laurel and manzanita bushes which flounced the mountain side. After the dancing, old-fashioned children's games were revived with great laughter and half-hearted and coy protests from the ladies; notably one pastime known as "I'm a-pinin'," in which ingenious performance the victim was obliged to stand in the centre of a circle and publicly "pine" for a member of the opposite sex. Some hilarity ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... mother was doubtful as to her daughter-in-law's project and even Musai was but half-hearted. Yet he went to work diligently. With beam, and wattle, and thatch, floor of mats and window of latticed paper, with walls made tight because well daubed with clay, he built the room apart. There alone, day by day, secluded from all, the sweet wife toiled unseen. ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... letter to Peder Galle. "I am much troubled," he declared, "that marriage is permitted to the clergy, and that no one cries out against it. I have urged the king that Petri be excommunicated for his act, that evil example may not spread, but have had only a half-hearted answer from his Majesty." While this wrong still rankled in the prelate's breast, his ire was further kindled by the monarch's evident intention to rob the Church of several of her chief estates. As an entering wedge ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... aristocratic view of the responsibilities of youth and quite new to me. Caligula was worried in a like manner, I believe. We had near us there a little section of the old world which was trying, in a half-hearted fashion, to maintain itself in the midst of a democracy. It was the manorial life of the patroons—a relic of ancient feudalism which had its beginning in 1629, when The West Indies Company issued its charter of Privileges and Exemptions. That charter offered to any ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... cry. It wanted to get out of bed and sit on the po-po. Nothing strange or unusual or lovely would or could happen. Life was too close, intimate. Nothing that could happen in the apartment could in any way stir him; the things his wife might say, her occasional half-hearted outbursts of passion, the goodness of his mother-in-law who did the work ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... to look into some rumours of a strange woman who had been seen by some children on the Chatham Road the previous morning. As to my friend, all his usual energy seemed to have deserted him. I had never known him handle a case in such a half-hearted fashion. Even the news brought back by Hopkins that he had found the children and that they had undoubtedly seen a woman exactly corresponding with Holmes's description, and wearing either spectacles or eye-glasses, failed to rouse any sign of keen ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... feel that there were terrors worse than those of the kindly prison, and that escape might be tenfold more unpleasant than confinement. Then she saw the priest, and her half-hearted attempt to attract his attention to her plight, resulted so differently from what she had expected that her nerves were again leaping with the old desire to outwit her captors. He was coming to the castle, but how was she to acquaint him with the true state of affairs? She would ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... have made everything right for me, denied all things though we are. After ten years of struggle with the vineyard, with several conspicuous failures and now and then a half-hearted success, I have at last rejoiced Mother's heart—and my own as well—with the largest crop within my memory or hers. The fruit, too, has ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... man now stared at Polly and then at Mollie and afterwards back again from one to the other. He started to whistle but stopped himself in time. "Gee, but you are alike—with a difference," he returned, neither accepting nor refusing to accept Polly's half-hearted apology. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... of Browning's Poems, and it contained "Sludge"; it also happened that it contained "The Statue and the Bust"—that stimulating lecture on half-hearted constraints. "Sludge" did not interest Lewisham, it was not at all his idea of a medium, but he read and re-read "The Statue and the Bust." It had the profoundest effect upon him. He went to sleep—he used to read his literature ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... other. "Fact is, Balderstone, I'm glad of it. She's too snippy for me, and I'm afraid I should have quarrelled with you about her in a half-hearted, unconvincing manner." ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... immigration of people from their old homes in France. Some of them did this. Robert Giffard, who held the seigneury of Beauport just below Quebec, was a notable example. The great majority of the seigneurs, however, made only half-hearted attempts in this direction, and their efforts went for little or nothing. What they did was to meet, on arrival at Quebec, the shiploads of settlers sent out by the royal officers. There they gathered about the incoming vessel, like so ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... playtime had now left him for good. The time for half-hearted or three-quarters-hearted attempts to forge ahead were over. He had pledged his heart and shortly hoped to pledge his hand in the service of the loveliest young lady in the world, none less. At present he was only a young instructor; of promise, perhaps, but still unproved. ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... Horses are thus what is called "steadied" at their fences, but the pull should not be made nearer the fence than 30 yards. When a lady has made up her mind to ride at a fence, she should think of nothing else but getting over it. Some women go at their fences in such a half-hearted, irresolute manner that their horses learn to refuse. Too much practice over "made" fences is monotonous to the rider and hateful to her horse, who is only too apt to become "reluctant" in such cases. Hence, if ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... to kill him or at least give him a shake died away. He had the smell of a young Cub. Her own were about his age, her heart was touched, and when he found courage enough to put his nose up and smell her nose, she made no angry demonstration except a short half-hearted growl. Now, however, he had smelled something that he sorely needed. He had not fed since the day before, and when the old Wolf turned to leave him, he tumbled after her on clumsy puppy legs. Had the Mother-wolf been far from home he must soon have been left behind, but the nearest hollow was ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... with something like financial ruin. Mercenary armies are very costly, and by bitter experience he had learnt the futility of opposing a half-hearted and badly disciplined force to the veteran troops of Alva. He resolved therefore to go in person to Holland to organise and direct the strong movement of revolt, which had found expression in the meeting of the Estates at Dordrecht. His ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... as far as the United States was concerned, however; for when the circumstance became known to Mr. Leggett, he excoriated Mr. Irving for his subserviency to a bloated aristocracy, and so forth. Mr. John Wilson reviewed the book in Blackwood's Magazine in a half-hearted way, patronizing the writer ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... battle-field. In almost every pursuit he valued, he had nothing in common with his people. He had believed he might truthfully answer yes to his father's enquiry whether he had returned a Hebrew, yet he now felt it would be only a reluctant and half-hearted assent. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the sisters toiled, never in a half-hearted way, but untiringly, day after day, until one of their number, being perhaps less strong, or more weary from work to which she had been unaccustomed, and more susceptible to disease, was stricken with fever, and after only a few days' illness, ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... special state of things by his rebellion against natural selection and his defiance of Nature's pre-human dispositions, that he must either go on and acquire firmer control of the conditions, or perish miserably by the vengeance certain to fall on the half-hearted meddler in great affairs. We may indeed compare civilized man to a successful rebel against Nature, who, by every step forward, renders himself liable to greater and greater penalties, and so cannot afford to ...
— Progress and History • Various
... shared his views and regarded themselves as his confederates; but, even among them, the minor details of life claimed their place, and Gorgo, who entered into the struggle for the triumph of the old gods, gave but a half-hearted attention to the great cause to which she was enthusiastically devoted, because a companion of her childhood, to whose attentions she had every claim, delayed his visit longer than ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of, or hostile to, his authority was inimical to religion, and must, as a religious duty, be checked, and, if possible, destroyed. Exactly the same principle animated his dealings with Cardinal Newman. Rightly or wrongly, Manning thought Newman a half-hearted Papalist. He dreaded alike his way of putting things and his practical policy. Newman's favourite scheme of establishing a Roman Catholic college at Oxford, Manning regarded as fraught with peril to the faith of the rising generation. The scheme must therefore be crushed ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... as to what to Do First. Retain so far as possible your presence of mind, or, in other words, keep cool. This is an all-important direction. Act promptly and quietly, but not with haste. Whatever you do, do in earnest; and never act in a half-hearted manner in the presence of danger. Of course, a knowledge of what to-do and how to do it will contribute much towards that self-control and confidence that command success. Be sure and send for a doctor at once if the emergency calls for skilled service. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... that night, and at dawn, in spite of Stefan's forecast, another attack was made upon the gate. It was as unsuccessful as the first, nor was it made with such determination. The obedience to orders was only half-hearted. ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... have arrived at a correct verdict in this case I cannot persuade myself to entertain the shadow of a doubt; and I hope, at all events, that those who sometimes imagine that a Judge is half-hearted in the cause of decency and morality because he takes care no prejudice shall enter into the case may see that that is consistent at least with the utmost sense of indignation at the horrible charges brought home ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Menthe. It was the same rotten little place I had arrived at. It is only because I am trying to sell the "station-master" a copy of this book that I call the place a station at all. It really is a decomposing collection of half-hearted buildings and moss-grown rails, with an apology for a platform at ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... who had been sent with the news keeping watch at the door outside, and Humphrey, for the time, seemed to go over, half unconsciously, the scenes of the taking of Axel, and Mary listened to it not exactly with half-hearted sympathy, but with the perpetually recurring cry at her heart that God would restore to her her ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... now going to send a message to me. There is nothing half-hearted about James when he has his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... going behind the hard crust of official documents, the Committee allowed itself to be guided with criminal laziness by mere official evidence. The report and the despatches, in my humble opinion, constitute an attempt to condone official lawlessness. The cautious and half-hearted condemnation pronounced upon General Dyer's massacre and the notorious crawling order only deepens the disappointment of the reader as he goes through page after page of thinly disguised official whitewash. I need, however, ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... bare suggestion of such a thing drew her into a half-hearted defense of the project. Numbers of the girls she knew down here who had been doing war work were going enthusiastically into things like that—or at least were announcing an invincible determination to do so. Only they were cleverer than she at that sort of thing and could hope for better jobs. They ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and the Barbarians seemed springing to meet them. From the mainland a tumult of voices was rising, the myriads around Xerxes encouraging their comrades by sea to play the man. No indecisive, half-hearted battle should this be, as at Artemisium. Persian and Hellene knew that. The keen Phoenicians, who had chafed at being kept from action so long, sent their line of ships sweeping over the waves with furious strokes. The grudges, the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... proceeded so far in his interference with the regular course of Nature that he must either go on and acquire firmer control of the conditions, or perish miserably by the vengeance certain to be inflicted on the half-hearted meddler in great affairs. This rebel by every step forward renders himself liable to greater and greater penalties, and so cannot afford to pause or fail in one single step. One of Nature's most powerful agencies in thwarting his determination to live is found in disease-producing ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... it is not possible to even faintly like or hesitatingly pity a cowardly Robert Herrick, whose self-pity is so strong, and who from first to last is, as his creator intended him to be, a thorough inefficient. Half-hearted in his wickedness, self-saving in his repentance, he somehow fails to interest one; and even his lower-class associates, the horrible Huish and the American captain, are almost less detestable. Huish is quite ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... if we are to have an intelligently directed anti-war campaign, that we should make a clear, sound classification of these half-hearted people, these people who do not want war, but who permit it. Their indecisions, their vagueness, these are the really effective barriers to our desire to end ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... principles to make a colossal mistake, and a hot sympathy for the colonists which was not long resolving itself into as burning a patriotism as any in the land. It was not in him to do anything by halves, it is doubtful if he ever realized the half-hearted tendency of the greater part of mankind. He studied the question from the first Stamp Act to the Tea Party. The day he was convinced, he ceased to be a West Indian. The time was not yet come to draw the sword in behalf of the country for which he conceived a romantic ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... him and raise your face to his—turn sideways more. That's it. Put your hand up to his shoulder. You're slightly lit, you know, and you're inviting him to kiss you over his glass. You others, you're drinking gay enough, but see if you can get over that it's only half-hearted. You at the other end there—you're staring at your wine glass, then you look slowly up at your partner but without any life. You're feeling the blight, see? A chap down the line here just did it perfectly. All ready, now! Lights! Camera! You blonde girl, stand up, face raised to him, ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... Never half-hearted in her quarrels, Lady Ogram made known to all her acquaintances in the neighbourhood the opinion she had of Mr. Robb, and was in no wise discouraged when it came to her ears that the banker M. P. spoke of taking legal proceedings against ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... as he entered the ring. Only a very slight and very scattering ripple of half-hearted hand-clapping greeted him. The house did not believe in him. He was the lamb led to slaughter at the hands of the great Danny. Besides, the house was disappointed. It had expected a rushing battle between Danny Ward and Billy Carthey, and here it must put up with this ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... the twelve-year-old daughter of Michel, did not appear. The table was kept waiting for an hour. Michel sat down but could not eat, and, after scolding awhile in a half-hearted fashion, he went to the clearing down the road, where the child had been playing. A placard was seen upon a tree beside the way, and he called a passing neighbor to read to him these words: "Meshell Coosy. French rascal. Pay ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... to Lester Stark's rather half-hearted greeting—Lester Stark never had liked Dacre Wynne and they both knew it. "You here as well? Merriton's giving me a send-off and no mistake. Gad! you chaps will be envying me this time next week, I'll swear! ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... reprinting the letters in Edinburgh. Whether the executors believed Mrs. Stanhope's story, or saw no reason to object to the publication of the letters, I do not know, but it is clear that the opposition was a half-hearted one. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... tackles his job in a half-hearted manner, using such ponderous polysyllables as "international" and "acquisition." Now Mr. Punch, always ready to lend a hand in a good cause, has instructed one of his young men to rewrite two of The Chronicle reviews in words of one syllable, and presents them to his contemporary ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... indicated a flight of stairs. At the top of these I was confronted by a glass door, beyond which, entrenched behind a desk, sat a cynical-looking youth. A smaller boy in the background talked into a telephone. Both were giggling. On seeing me the slightly larger of the two advanced with a half-hearted attempt at solemnity, though unable to resist a Parthian shaft at his companion, who was seized on the instant with a ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... eminently uneventful. Prosperous, happy in a half-hearted, almost negative, way, somewhat selfish, he had never known hardship, had never faced adversity. It is such men as this who love what they call a serious talk, summoning the subject thereof with exaggerated gravity to ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... fresh, for all his march of a thousand miles, and he welcomed them both to Zion. Again and again while he talked to them he caught quick glances from the wonderful eyes;—glances of interest, of inquiry,—now of half-hearted defiance, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... France; the decisive event was the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, October 19, 1781, to Washington, commanding the allied French and American forces, with the aid of the French fleet. Although the war was still continued in a half-hearted way, the Cornwallis disaster convinced England of its hopelessness, and led to negotiations for peace. In these the diplomatic talents of Franklin eclipsed his financial abilities. And this was the more remarkable, since he was not trained in the diplomatic school, where dissimulation ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
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